Any which whey: America's protein obsession

Good Food

KCRW

Society & Culture

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The protein powder boom, anchovies, ancient Roman recipes, and more!

Whey, the liquid byproduct of cheese making, was once considered waste. It's now a key ingredient in the protein powders that dieters and weightlifters are downing in ever-greater amounts — and that means big changes for the dairy industry, reports Kevin Draper.
Horror film producer turned food historian Christopher Beckman chronicles the anchovy's place in the European cooking canon.
Sally Grainger reinterprets Roman recipes taken from Latin texts.
As students head back to school, we catch up with Jack Bobo, Executive Director of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman, and this is good food.
0:10.9	Protein, protein, protein. Eat more protein. I've heard it. You've heard it. We have probably all heard it.
0:19.2	And we've been listening.
0:26.6	Americans are eating more protein than ever, often in the form of whey.
0:29.2	That's W-H-E-Y.
0:34.8	Way is a byproduct of making cheese, and it used to be a headache for cheesemakers.
0:37.2	Now it's big business. In 2020, a pound of high protein
0:40.3	weigh cost $3. Today it costs about 10, and the industry is booming, growing about 10%
0:49.0	each year. New York Times reporter Kevin Draper wrote about how this protein-rich elixir is transforming the dairy industry.
0:58.7	Hi, Kevin.
1:00.0	Hello, thanks so much for having me on.
1:02.8	So I'm curious, did you land on this story because you found your self-consuming mountains of weight protein powder?
1:12.1	That was not the primary reason, though it did play a small role. It was mostly actually
1:17.9	sort of being in the grocery store and just seeing added protein and all sorts of products,
1:25.5	you know, candy bars, chips, just, you know, any old thing these days
1:31.2	seems to have added protein in it.
1:33.9	And it got me curious as to why and where that protein came from and how it was possibly
1:40.3	transforming the dairy in other industries.
1:43.2	Why don't you start off by telling us in the simplest terms what way is and how it's created?
1:50.5	Yeah, so way is what is left over after you make cheese.
1:55.8	Different cheeses are made a lot of different ways, and so this will be simplified a little bit. But, you know,
2:02.6	cheese is made out of milk. It's made out of rennet or enzymes, and then other things added
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 14 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KCRW, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KCRW and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.